[This is a re-post from Lux Umbra Dei, July 8, 2023.]
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A Substack I happily read and support is the excellent Land Desk by Jonathan P. Thompson, one of our country's premier chroniclers of our drylands and western spaces. This week he was discussing among other things, the gathering heat and quoted Homer in the Iliad:
“Priam saw him first, with his old man's eyes,
A single point of light on Troy's dusty plain.
Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
On summer nights, star of stars,
Orion's Dog they call it, brightest
Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat
And fevers to suffering humanity.
Achilles' bronze gleamed like this as he ran.”
It made me remember great Achilles' distant grandson, Calorviator, who shone like liquid silver as he came over the burning plain of the dried sea, Aral. Grandfather was the offspring of the union of gods and men, a near unvanquishable demigod. Grandson was the offspring of men and Earth's life, well able to overcome the dread portent of the Dog Star's baleful glimmer.
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May 26, 2024 C.E.
There is a future Earth coming that may be all but uninhabitable. A planet, our planet, that has lost almost forty percent of its atmosphere and eighty percent of its oceans. All this, a calamity partly our sun’s doing, partly our own miscalculations. To learn more, next we must take vacation there courtesy of the technology of the far future.